Frank Carone will leave chief of staff gig by the end of the year

September 20, 2022 Rob Abruzzese

Frank Carone. Photo: Rob Abruzzese/Brooklyn Eagle

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Frank Carone, a former Brooklyn Bar Association president and the chief of staff for Mayor Eric Adams, confirmed this week that he will be stepping down from his current position as No. 2 in New York City by the end of the year.

“I will never be prouder of anything than what we’ve accomplished in the last 18 months,” Carone said in a statement. “From helping the mayor build the best group of public servants in the city’s history to playing a role in navigating us through the most difficult first few months any mayor has seen in decades, this time has been more fulfilling than I could possibly imagine.”

Carone, a former lawyer for the Brooklyn Democratic Party and an executive partner at Abrams Fensterman, is reportedly going to work on Adams’ 2025 re-election campaign. He told the New York Post that before he does that he’s planning on taking a long vacation with his family this January.

Adams told reporters that the plan all along was for Carone to stay on for one year in order to help him lay a foundation for his administration. It is unclear whether or not Carone will return to Abrams Fensterman, which he joined in 2011 and was, for a time, a named partner.

Carone served as president of the Brooklyn Bar Association from 2019 to 2020. In 2021, City and State Magazine included Carone on their Law Power List as one of the named partners at Abrams Fensterman, now Brooklyn’s largest law firm. When Abrams joined there was no Brooklyn office; put in charge of building it, he started with 40 attorneys and grew it to 120.

Carone, who is from Canarsie and graduated from St. John’s University and Brooklyn Law School, founded a successful mortgage bank prior to his time at Abrams Fensterman, a multi-state enterprise with more than 200 employees. He is also known for his two terms on the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission, for which he was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2011 and reappointed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2015.

Carone helped Adams out with his mayoral election campaign, but when he was named chief of staff following the victory it came as a surprise to many including some people close to him. His former law partner, Frank Seddio, called the move very unexpected at the time.

While Carone was president of the BBA, he hosted events that included a forum with District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. Carone is proud to have been known as a president who kept the association’s committees active and he pushed the bar to be more service oriented.